REFrame STaff

Raine Brandon, Program Associate

Raine Brandon conducted youth justice research while completing her BA in Sociology, with a minor in Criminology/Criminal Justice, at Hampton University. Her research led to opportunities to publish and present at numerous conferences and participate in a National Science Foundation summer research internship with The University of Miami, Graduate School. She then went on to receive her Masters in Social Work with an emphasis on Community Action and Social Policy at University of Maryland, Baltimore. During this time she had the opportunity to travel to the Philippines with a multi-disciplinary group of students, furthering her passion for children and social justice. Raine began her career working as the Program Manager for The Just Kids Campaign at CLIA, where they worked to stop the automatic prosecution of youth charged as adults in the Maryland criminal justice system through community organizing, education and legislative advocacy. Raine is currently living in the Sunshine State with her husband John, where they are involved with their church’s creative ministry and are appreciating building community that’s becoming like family. Raine is also a writer who enjoys reading, traveling and eating delicious food.

Alejandro Cantagallo, Operations Manager

Growing up in Queens, the son of immigrants, Alejandro had an early start in the food world helping his father out in the family's butcher shop. Throughout his twenties he worked at the Prison Moratorium Project as Co-Director focusing on popular education-based trainings and organizing work to stop the school to prison pipeline. After leaving the non-profit world he made his way through a number of North Shore country clubs and later shifted gears and started culinary school at CUNY CityTech. In 2010 Alejandro opened Floresta and despite acclaim closed a year later. Currently, he is an adjunct lecturer in the Department of Hospitality Management at CUNY New York City College of Technology. Alejandro's current instructional workload includes Culinary 1 and Introduction to Food and Beverage Management. He is pursuing a master’s degree in Labor Studies from the CUNY School of Professional Studies.

​Hermelinda Cortés,Senior Program Associate

Hermelinda Cortés (she/they) is the daughter of a Mexican immigrant father and a white factory-workinʼ mama. Raised in the country amidst the Southern delicacies of potato salad and mole, she is a working class Xicana Queer Feminist mama from the heart of the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. A luddite techie at heart, she schemes and daydreams about liberation and movement driven communications to build lasting connections between communities and to strategically dismantle systems of domination. She came to movement with lots of other young people through Students for a Democratic Society in the height of protests against the Iraq War, climate change, and draconian immigration policy. She has been organizing ever since working across issues and across identities with organizations like the People United, 97.3 LPFM WRIR Independent Radio, the Flying Brick Library, the Shenandoah Valley YES! Alliance, Better Together, Southerns On New Ground, and Groundswell Fund. She comes to ReFrame after a decade of organizing and communications brujería. Hermelinda returned to the rolling blue hills of Virginia in 2012 (after a somewhat failed attempt at city life) where she writes, cooks, and kicks it with her dogs, kid, chickens, and chosen familia. She believes in the magic, alchemy, strategy, and revolutionary possibilities of small towns and rural people.

Kimberly Freeman Brown, Programming Co-Director

Kimberly Freeman Brown is President of KFB Consulting, LLC, a boutique organizational development and strategic communications consulting firm that supports some of the foremost progressive leaders and advocacy, organizing and political organizations in the nation. Clients have utilized her expertise on racial and gender equity and inclusion initiatives, communications strategy, leadership development and organizational development; and as an executive coach and facilitator. Prior to launching the firm, she served as Executive Director of American Rights at Work, a labor policy organization that merged with Jobs with Justice under her leadership in 2012. She is the author of I Dream Detroit: TheVoice and Vision of Women of Color on Detroit’s Future (2017) and And Still I Rise: Black Women Labor Leaders’ Voices, Power and Promise (2015), both released by the Institute of Policy Studies. An outspoken advocate for racial and gender justice and labor rights, Brown has been quoted or published editorials in major daily newspapers and national news outlets including The New York Times, USA Today, Politico and The Hill, and on the websites of Ebony, NBC News, Buzzfeed and The Huffington Post. She has also appeared on TV One’s NewsOne, Fox Business, and CNBC. In addition to serving as Programming Co-Director for Reframe, Kimberly is also Senior Advisor on racial equity, inclusion and leadership at the Center for Popular Democracy and an affiliate coach with Rockwood Leadership Institute. Additionally, she serves on the board of directors of Grassroots Policy Project, an organization that works with social justice movement groups to develop grassroots power for social transformation. You can connect with her on Twitter @kfreemanbrown.

Joseph Phelan, Director

Joseph is a creative strategist with a long history working in and with racial justice and economic justice organizations. Prior to his current work as a strategic communications consultant for foundations and organizing groups, he was the Communications Coordinator at Miami Workers Center, and a founding staff member at Florida New Majority, where he built a communications shop that also served the Florida Immigrant Coalition. After leaving Miami, Joseph joined Caring Across Generations as the Communications Director where we oversaw national communications strategy and supported state-based civic engagement campaigns. Joseph is an expert in strategy development, creative action design and communications training. He is also mildly obsessed with the coming robot apocalypse and the impact of rapidly evolving technology on the future of work and all facets of life. You can find him on Twitter @JTPspeaks.

﻿Jen Soriano, Programming Co-Director​

Jen Soriano is a Pinay writer and communications strategist originally from Chicago. She is a leader in the field of progressive communications, with more than 17 years of experience building the persuasive power of social justice groups across the country. Through her consultancy Lionswrite Communications, Jen has strengthened dozens of the most impactful environmental, immigrant rights, racial justice and workers' rights organizations at the local, national and international levels. In 2002, Jen co-founded the Center for Media Justice in Oakland, CA along with CMJ’s Executive Director Malkia Cyril. The Center for Media Justice has helped build a nationwide grassroots movement for digital equity, and has been instrumental in mobilizing leaders from communities of color to secure Net Neutrality and defend civil liberties in the face of unprecedented digital surveillance. In 2011, Jen joined the RoadMap Consulting Network as its Strategic Communications Coordinator. In this role, Jen helped design and launch RoadMap's Weathering the Storms crisis preparedness and response project and now leads its crisis communications arm. Jen is also an essayist who shares her writing at jensoriano.net and rants about politics at @lionswrite.